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Our Favorite Watches From The Movies
Watches often play a pivotal role in movies. At the most basic level, they can be little touches of product placement window dressing; manufacturers fork over tidy sums to the producers to get their pieces displayed on the hero’s wrist for a second or two.
But the ones which have gone on to become slices of film folklore in their own right go deeper than that. Just as with us in the real world, a director’s choice of timepiece for their protagonist (or their villain) can do much of the character development heavy lifting. Bond wears a luxury tool watch that can double up as a dress watch because that’s what his duties demand, for instance.
And in some of the best cases, a watch becomes an integral part of the plot. If you’ve seen Butterdish Cucumbersnatch in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, you’ll know what I mean.
Below then are three of the most iconic watches from the movies.
Patrick Bateman and His Japanese Datejust
We all know that Patrick Bateman, the loathsome ‘80s yuppie antihero played by Christian Bale in the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, wears a two-tone Rolex Datejust.
We all know that, right? Well, we did. As it turns out, for reasons which should be blatantly obvious if you’ve watched the movie, Rolex were…reluctant to allow a torturing, cannibalizing, necrophiliac serial killer sport one of their bestselling watches on the big screen, perhaps reasoning it would be somewhat injurious to the old brand image.
Instead, the props department hooked Bale up with the closest they could find, which turned out to be a Seiko 5 SNXJ90.
To call this an homage to the Rolex is to stretch the term to breaking point. A more apt descriptor might be straight up duplicate.
Actually, that’s not completely fair. The SNXJ90 does differ from the Datejust in a few areas, probably just enough to keep the Rolex legal team from battering down the door.
For one, it is slightly bigger than the 1980’s era DJ; 38mm as opposed to 36mm. It also has both a date andday of the week display in the three o’clock window, and no Cyclops lens. Furthermore, the winding crown is in an unusual not-quite-four-o’clock position, and there is a display case back.
Other than that, though, there is no doubting from where Seiko drew their inspiration. The case is pure Datejust, as are the handset, indexes and fluted bezel. And the ‘Jubilee-style’ bracelet could have been lifted straight off a ref. 16013.
Plus, however much Rolex might object to the idea, a yellow Rolesor Datejust is simply the watch a real life Bateman would have worn, as much a part of the Wall Street uniform at the time as red power ties and those stripy shirts with different color collars.
It took until American Psycho was remastered in 4K before anyone was able to spot the error we’d all been making for 20-years regarding the watch. Picture quality in the original version wasn’t clear enough to be able to tell.
Rolex, as is their way, has never made any kind of statement alluding to the fact their watches had nothing to do with it, probably sticking by the old adage that any publicity is good publicity.
But, now we know!
James Bond and His Rolex Submariner ref. 6538
Without wanting to start a debate, although you are more than welcome to throw in your own two cents in the comment section, the Rolex Sub ref. 6538 is James Bond’s watch.
How do I know this? Well, several reasons; key among them is that that particular reference of vintage Submariner has been known as the ‘Bond Sub’ for about 50-years.
It was also the first watch to get any real screen time in the movies (although it wasn’t the first to appear. That was a Gruen Precision 510 Bond wore at a London Baccarat table in Dr No, fact fans).
Moreover, it was worn by the best Bond, Sean Connery (and I won’t be debating that. He just was!)
But maybe most of all, the piece itself was just the perfect choice. It was made at a time when Rolex built watches as tools first and status symbols second, and so it was ideal for a man who really did need to go from clandestine night dives to blow up heroin processing plants to sipping cocktails at nefarious South American beachside bars without running home to change first.s
And there was a subtleness about the director’s use of the watch that has since been lost. In the early Bond films, there was no real sense they were there to sell either the model or the brand. They were just what 007 would wear because they were right for the job. In the modern era, Omega brings out another ‘limited edition’ for each new movie, then pay untold sums to get them prominently exhibited and no one is left in any doubt about it all being a bit of a cash grab for them.
Nope, the ref. 6538, only produced from 1954 to 1959, with its Big Crown and red triangle, is the watch a real fictional superspy would wear.
Schwarzenegger and His Seiko ‘Arnie’
Flipping idly through the channels a while back I happened upon Arnold Schwarzenegger’s magnum opus from 1985, Commando.
It was a movie I can remember thinking was a work of unparalleled genius when I saw it first as a child and I wanted to see if it had stood the test of time as well as I was sure it must have.
As it turns out, the brains of little boys take longer than 11-years to fully mature and that former piece of cinematic virtuosity turned out, in fact, to be the most heinous pile of steroid-pumped awfulness ever committed to celluloid.
But, I like to think just about everything has at least one redeeming feature, and in Commando and again two years later in Predator (they didn’t waste time with definite articles in the ‘80s) Arnie wears a watch that has since gone on to bear his name; surely one of the greatest complements any movie star can get.
The H558-5009 was released in 1982 as part of the Seiko Tuna collection and was one of the first analog-digital dive watches. Tough, water resistant to 150m, with a unidirectional bezel plus an alarm and chronograph, it was certainly the watch I would have chosen if I’d been called on to slaughter a deposed dictator’s entire mercenary army on my own or take on an eight-foot tall alien hunting me for sport (11-year old me thought both possibilities were somehow imminent).
Most of all though, at 46mm in diameter, it was one of the few models around at the time which wouldn’t have made Arnie look like a grown man wearing a child’s toy.
Should Schwarzenegger ever fancy another crack at an overthrown tyrant in the near future, he’ll be relieved to hear that Seiko brought out what they called the ‘modern interpretation’ of the Arnie in 2019. The SNJ025 is even bigger than that original, clocking in at some 47.8mm, but otherwise sticks close to its forerunner. Nowadays though, the ana-digi power comes from a solar quartz movement, the H851, and the watch offers a touch of extra functionality. Water resistance has increased to 200m and it can also be used as a dual time zone piece, with home time displayed by the three hands and local time in the little digital window.
Yes, you might still need arms like Austrian oaks to pull it off, but the 21st century Arnie is a lot of fun.
Featured Photo: BeckerTime’s Archive.
